Windows Media Center (Vista) Choppy Music

I have a Dell Inspiron laptop running Windows Vista 32 bit and I enjoy playing my music files on Windows Media Center in "shuffle" mode while running a random photo slideshow at the same time.

The problem is that when I do this, approximately 10 seconds before the song ends, it suddenly becomes very choppy and stutters for a few seconds. It's almost as if the computer is struggling to get the next song ready for play. I'm sorry, I know that's not a very technical description, but it's the best way I can describe it. Has anyone else had this problem playing music with Windows Media Center on Vista?